1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and systems for transacting business, and more particularly to methods for enabling transactions in network traffic, including using traffic as payment-in-kind for software, hardware or other products and services that may be connected to a wide area network.
2. Description of the Related Art
The widespread availability of “free” services over publicly accessible networks, such as the Internet, both reflects and reinforces a widespread expectation that software (and by implication, the hardware that software runs on) be made available on public networks in exchange for something other than the payment of cash by the software end user to the software owner or licensee. This expectation is consistent with public expectations concerning proprietary material, such as copyrighted entertainment, offered over traditional broadcast media such as television or radio. According to the prevalent business model in broadcasting, the end user who receives and enjoys broadcast material pays nothing directly to the broadcaster or producer to defray their production and broadcasting expenses. Instead, these costs are primarily paid for by sponsors who purchase advertising time or space from the broadcaster. The sponsors, in turn, recoup their advertising costs from consumers who are at least in part induced to purchase goods or services from the sponsor as a result of advertisements.
A similar model is used in networked media. A network host defrays the costs of operating a website by selling advertising space to sponsors. Frequently, the host provides copyrighted content for free use or viewing to attract consumers to the host site, who view the advertising and thereby contribute to the creation of the valuable advertising space that is sold by the host to the sponsor.
The sponsor typically desires to asses the monetary value of the advertising time or space that it is purchasing. In broadcast models, this is often done through using sophisticated analytical and measurement tools to estimate the extent that advertisements are being viewed, and the extent to which the viewing of advertisements results in greater revenues to the sponsor. Similar tools may be employed in networked media; however, networked media affords the additional opportunity to directly measure “traffic” to a network target generated by a particular ad or web page. Traffic may be measured in various automatic ways, such as by counting “click-through” to the target. However it is measured, traffic essentially represents a direct measure of consumer interest in the target. Because it can be quickly and automatically determined, and represents a direct measure of consumer interest, the cash value of traffic is readily assessable. The source of traffic to a target is also readily and automatically determinable. For example, the traffic generated by a particular ad, such as a banner ad, may readily be determined. Accordingly, traffic can be bought, sold, exchanged for value, and otherwise used in business like any other commodity.
However, transactions in network media have not heretofore been able to take full advantage of the abundant opportunities that traffic as an exchangeable commodity offers. For example, most frequently, network media transactions merely mimic the classic media model whereby a sponsor pays cash in exchange for advertising space (such as a banner ad) on a web server. For further example, slightly more sophisticated transactions include those, such as a free web hosting service, wherein rights to use a network resource are exchanged for a right to occupy viewing space on a user's view screen with banner ads and similar traffic-generating objects. In a free host service, the user (typically, an individual consumer) does not pay for the right to connect to and access the network through a host server. Instead, the user grants the host server the right to insert advertising on the user's viewing screen. In other words, the right to occupy space on the user's view screen supplants cash as payment-in-kind.
In both of the foregoing examples, it is advertising space that is exchanged, not traffic itself. However, traffic is a more desirable and more valuable commodity, because it is more closely related to the desired end result (namely, increased sales by a sponsor) than is advertising space. Furthermore, exchanges of advertising space suffer from several limitations. For example, free host servers typically configure the user's interface so that a substantial portion of the view screen is always occupied by the host's advertising. This is obtrusive and substantially reduces the user's usable viewing area, making the free host service less desirable and less likely to attract the more desirable users, that is, those who can afford to pay for network access without giving up viewable area. In general, the effectiveness of advertising on the Internet has come into question, and is frequently not as effective as desired. Furthermore, exchanges of advertising space are more limited in applicability than exchanges of the more fungible and liquid traffic would be, if only a system and method were available to make such transactions feasible.
It is desired, therefore, to provide a system and method whereby traffic (and not merely advertising space) may be exchanged for a property right, such as a license to use or an ownership right to network-connected devices and to copyrighted content on such devices.